


because i knew you (i have been changed)

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death, different past iterations of Laura die but canon!Laura stays alive don't worry alls well ends well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-18 07:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15480378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: The thing about Laura was that Silas wasn't the first time Carmilla had run across her. Sometime long ago, a faint memory beckoned.They were always meant to be together. It just took a few tries for it to stick.





	because i knew you (i have been changed)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LMoriarty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMoriarty/gifts).



> For LMoriarty, who wanted soulmate reincarnation. This is the second story I wrote for you, because the first story diverged just a tiny, eensy-weensy bit from the prompt.

The first girl Carmilla intentionally drank down was eighteen. Her own age. 

To the girl, eighteen was still a child. Laura, as Carmilla had overheard her called, was out on the town, just beginning to explore her life. Carmilla felt ancient, brittle, like she was on display from the museum.

Carmilla had made an effort not to watch Laura throughout tea. She tried focusing on other girls, other meals, the gnawing hunger in her stomach that was so different from the way Laura leaned into her friends and laughed without a care in the world. Laura was incredibly human. Incredibly lovely. 

And incredibly brazen. While most of the other girls made their way out the door of the tea-house with their friends when sunset approached, Laura had marched up to Carmilla. She thrust out a hand, ignoring Carmilla’s half-growl. “Hello! Good morning! My name is Laura." She squinted at Carmilla, then retracted her offered hand. "I’d like to be friends.”

"I wouldn't," Carmilla informed Laura's dress. It was fashionable, which meant her neck and shoulders were sinfully bare, shining porcelain in the candlelight and waning sun. "So. Farewell."

She had almost turned to go when-

“Ha!” Laura snorted, unladylike, and crossed her arms. Her dress rearranged itself to display her bust, and it was all Carmilla could do to avert her eyes. All thoughts of leaving fled her mind. “Well, you don’t seem to have any other friends. So, frankly, it would be rude _not_ to be friends with you.”

It took a minute for Carmilla to come up with a response to  _that_. Which meant by the time she'd gathered her wits enough to make an exit, burying her hunger in exasperated rage, Laura had had the time to dismiss her friends. Which meant she was able to follow Carmilla with enough dogged determination Carmilla was near envious. There wasn't pity in Laura's offer, not quite, but Laura was more determined than anyone would be if they were making friends for their own sake. Laura had seen something lonely about her and was determined to fix it.

Carmilla finally snapped when she'd reached her carriage, Will snickering from the driver's seat. "Fine," she told Laura, who looked unreasonably pleased with her resignation. "If you want to get to know me so badly, then you may join me. Though, Laura, I can't say you'll enjoy what you learn."

Laura clasped her hands together, delighted. "Oh, that's the best kind of start to a friendship, don't you think?"

The funny thing was… when Carmilla leaned in, Laura didn’t look scared. Her lips parted, and she sighed, like she was expecting-

But Carmilla’s teeth fastened on her neck. Laura was silent after that first moment, sagging more and more against Carmilla until she was nothing more than dead weight. That sensation, more than the blank look in her eyes where light had once shone, was what made Carmilla's blood-full stomach churn. 

Will helped her dispose of the body just outside of town. Carmilla didn’t watch Laura roll down into the gully, smacking boneless against trees and rocks, but she couldn’t help but hear it.

“Sated yet?” Will asked, too cheerful for what they were doing. “I find that it’s hard to get a satisfying amount of blood unless you’re devouring their heartsblood, so to speak.”

Carmilla didn’t reply. She leant back against the leather of the carriage seat and closed her eyes. Her fangs throbbed. Her tongue tasted like tea and summer and iron. She tasted Laura.

 

* * *

 

The first werewolf Carmilla met was… interesting, to say the least.

Laura was second in command of her pack, underneath her father. She looked vaguely familiar, like she was decades out of place, but by that time Carmilla had seen so many thousands of people that they all blended together. What _really_ made her stand out was her breeches — no woman would be caught dead wearing them, not even Carmilla.

The werewolf threw herself down into her chair on her side of the treaty table, which, amazingly, didn’t creak or collapse under her weight. Carmilla gained a whole new appreciation for werewolf-crafted furniture. “So! I hear that you’re the one that’s gonna eat us all.”

Carmilla blinked, startled. Then a few more times, now that she remembered the motion existed. She’d spent the past however long with Maman and Will, and had nearly forgotten what living felt like. Laura was a thriving example of it, breathing and blinking and smelling faintly of blood from her split knuckles. “Not me, personally, no. But I was the one your men caught in the woods. So.”

Laura raised an eyebrow. “Pack. Not men. I understand you and yours may keep women on the sidelines, but pack here means family. That means we _all_ go patrolling.”

Family. That was what Carmilla was part of, too. Theoretically at least. Her, Maman, Will, Matska, and whatever new ingenues Mother had raised from beyond the grave this week. She didn’t think she’d ever said that like Laura, though. Like she was proud. Like she wanted to be part of it.

When Carmilla didn’t respond, Laura laughed. It was infectious, deep and uninhibited. Carmilla’s dead heart wished it could jump. “I see. So, is there any way out of this? Because I hear vampires throw some truly wonderful parties.” She gestured down to her breeches, her loose linen top. “As you can tell, we don’t have much of a chance to take part in fashionable events.”

Carmilla couldn’t stop herself from snorting. “That is obvious.” She wasn’t one to talk, the ancient walking dress she wore blood-stained at the hem, but she at least made an effort at propriety. “No. We aren’t inviting you to a party.”

Mattie might have made a quip about eating the werewolves as party favours. Carmilla did not.

The werewolf sighed and leant forward on the table, her arms braced across the wood. The neck opening of her shirt fell open, and Carmilla could see all the way down, her chest wrappings and her flat stomach. Laura didn’t seem to care. “Look, I don’t want to fight. We’re happy here in this land. We aren’t bothering anyone.”

“You’re bothering us,” Carmilla pointed out. “Maman wants this land. She obtained it a few centuries ago and had forgotten about it until now.”

“A few centuries ago?” Laura repeated, incredulous. “No she didn’t! We’ve been on this land since-“

The conversation devolved into a debate over land rights and squatter's rights and finally, land rights once more. Laura didn’t seem impressed to know that Maman had purchased the land from the Crown. According to her, if the ‘owner’ wasn’t around to bargain with the lumber-lusting townspeople to keep the land intact and healthy, they weren’t an owner at all.

It was almost sad to say goodbye to her. It had been an age since someone had argued with Carmilla and… well, actually argued. Most arguments with her family consisted of someone insisting they were right and pressing Carmilla until she bent and broke and agreed. Laura had only wanted to state her point, not to stake Carmilla.

Which is why it was a damn shame.

Will whisked past her, blowing her skirts wide in the dark. His laughter, gleeful and vicious, carried in the wind. More vampires, most merely week-old cannon fodder, streamed by her, silent as the night. She knew the same thing was happening on all sides of the werewolf encampment. Carmilla had been a diversion, nothing more.

Matska was the last by, and she stopped in front of Carmilla, hands on hips. Her eyes shone with something that was so, so close to life. “Darling. You aren’t going to take part in the fun?”

Carmilla shook her head. “I’m not hungry. I’m amazed you are, truly, after our trip through Saigon. I want a nap more than I want a werewolf.”

Screams started from the encampment behind her, interspersed with howls. Mattie gave Carmilla one last, assessing look, then ran off to join the fun.

Carmilla walked the rest of the way back up to their fleet of carriages alone, staring at her bloody hem long enough that the scent of fresh-spilled blood from the encampment rose to match it.

 

* * *

 

 The poor child Mother had risen this week wasn’t fit to be a vampire. Most of them weren’t, to be fair, but this one in particular Carmilla knew wouldn’t last much longer.  

She was too… soft. Not just in body. Carmilla was small and soft-looking, too, and she knew from experience that it didn’t stop her from ripping people’s throats out.

Carmilla watched Laura watch the people on the street pass by. They were well sheltered by the alley, the buildings slumped from the bombings in the war. Nobody would notice two girls in clothes too thin for the cold snap.

“If you’re hungry,” Carmilla told her, hating that she was the one here and not Mattie or Will or anyone else, “then pick one. I know you haven’t been turned long but you’re stronger than you-“

“I’m not,” the girl snapped. Laura refused to turn and look at Carmilla, instead wrapping herself deeper in her thin shawl. It smelled of smoke and explosives and it did _not_ smell of any kind of home. It couldn’t have been comforting. “I’m not going to eat anybody.”

Oh, lovely. Another bleeding heart. “They aren’t innocent, if that’s your problem. Didn’t you see their war?"

Laura shivered, and if she wasn’t a vampire already, Carmilla would have called it someone walking over her grave. “My war. My people. I’m not eating them.”

Carmilla was ready to start dragging out Mattie’s lecture on eating meat, but then she looked, _really_ looked at Laura. She was shivering in a cold she couldn’t feel, wrapped in what was looking more and more like a shroud. Her eyes on the crowd were hungry, but it wasn’t for their blood. It was for their life.

Cold ate its way into Carmilla’s bones. Or maybe she was just now noticing it. How long had it been since she was warm?

“If you’re determined not to sate your appetite, plain willpower won’t last you long,” Carmilla told her, soft as death. “You’ll crack. Wait long enough and you’ll wake up with your fingers in a strangers hair and your teeth in their neck.”

Laura stayed silent, but for her breath. It rasped in and out of her chest with a loudness that belied her lack of need for oxygen.

Carmilla spoke again, her eyes fixed on the cloud-filled sky above the crowd’s heads. “If you’re so intent on a hunger strike, little bloodsucker, then I might suggest something a little more drastic than thinking _I hope I won’t, I hope I won’t_.”

Silence reigned. Carmilla watched the first snowflakes fall. Most of the crowd ignored it, other than a few small children chattering and tugging away from their parents. When the flakes landed on Laura’s hair, they didn’t melt.

Slowly, like she was in a dream, Laura unwound the shawl from her shoulders and dropped it in a pile at her feet. Laura looked at her, then, her black new-turned eyes fathomless. “Thank you,” she said, and Carmilla had to swallow, the taste of blood suddenly rotten. “I know you might not have meant it as a kindness but— thank you anyway."

When Carmilla blinked, her eyes stinging for no reason she wanted to examine, Laura was gone. When the air stilled, Carmilla bent and scooped up the shawl Laura had dropped, shaking the grit out of it. It did smell of a home, now that she was concentrating on it. It smelled of Laura. 

For a long moment, Carmilla considered wrapping it around her shoulders and taking that faint wisp decency home with her. So she watched the snow fall, watched the children play, and watched the sun set for the first time in more than a hundred years.

 

* * *

 

Carmilla’s new idiot roommate reminded her of someone. She couldn’t quite place it. After all, four hundred years was a long time.

It made her uneasy, not knowing.

But soon, that uneasiness faded. Laura wasn’t from the past. She was excruciatingly current, waving her mug from her favourite TV show and chattering about the different chemical makeups of hot chocolate brands. Laura was warm, and human, and real.

Slowly, being around her made Carmilla feel like that too.

Carmilla was nothing to the light of the stars, burning uncaring above. But maybe, just maybe, she was something in the warm light of Laura.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at tumblr at writerproblem193, where I take minific prompts! 
> 
> If you liked this story, you'll probably also like my other story Seven Tears Into the Sea, where an immortal selkie!Laura follows Carmilla across time.


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